by Leito, Chad
Vanessa was standing there nodding her head.
Amy Kelly pulled the microphone back to her. “Thank you, Bud. Erin, do we have that footage ready to show viewers?”
Amy, Bud, and Vanessa disappeared and were replaced by hazy footage of the farm skyline. The camera moved slightly and Asa could tell that he was looking out a kitchen window by the four white, wooden, crisscrossing bars in the image. “Bud, get in here!” shouted an excited Vanessa. “Git in here, Bud!”
Footsteps played from behind the camera, and a dark figure shot threw the air far off on the screen. Asa wondered why the footage was such a big deal; the black dot in the sky could have been a great bird, or a remote control plane. At that distance, the nature of the object could not be discerned.
The flying object changed positions and Bud muttered, “Yee Gods!” just like he said he had. The thing flew closer and closer, seemingly right towards the camera. It was then that Asa saw the significance of the footage. There was no mistaking the shape of an adult male flying through the air; he was wearing a tight, black suit and his muscles moved in fluid succession, controlling the flight. Huge, wings came out of his back, but unlike Conway’s, this man’s looked like oversized dove wings, white and fluffy.
The man flew directly over the kitchen window and out of sight. There was a Whoosh! sound as he passed, and dishes clanked in the kitchen, moved by the wind the flying man brought with him.
“Let’s rewind that to give you a better view,” Erin the news anchor said. The footage was rewound to just before the flying man passed over the kitchen window. The paused image was blurry, and the face was dark, but it was impossible to deny that it was a humanlike creature with wings.
The anchor spoke—“the flying-man, or thing, has not been discovered yet. There are a lot of theories about what this is, from extraterrestrial species, to a prank done with video editing software. If you would like to share your ideas with this news station call 888-41…”
Asa turned the television off and relaxed in the cabin. The train was still traveling slightly over 600 miles per hour and he listened to the soft sound the engine made. He opened up his water bottle and chugged half of his supply down in a few gulps. His heart was hammering in his chest. He felt hot and claustrophobic inside the small space.
He didn’t want to watch anymore of the news because it was frightening him. Seeing the winged man on an accredited news station made his situation more real somehow. He wasn’t going crazy; other people had seen it too. He laid back and tried to think of something else, besides where he was going, or what they could want with him.
It took another half hour before Asa was asleep. He twitched in the cabin and his eyes rolled around behind his eyelids. His body was obtaining much needed rest, even if it was coming at the price of bad dreams for Asa.
6
Black Gums
There was a lurch and Asa woke up. He looked at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was after 4 o’clock in the afternoon. He reached his hands up and wiped tears that had been produced while he slept off of his cheeks. He couldn’t remember what he had been dreaming of; it felt to Asa as though the last six hours had passed in the blink of an eye.
The speedometer in the cabin slowed until it said 0 miles per hour. Up above, Asa saw bright industrial lights shining through the yellow glass of the train car. Now that he was awake, he was scared again; fright had been a near constant emotion for Asa since he had been pulled over by Harold Kensing. The train car settled down, there was a hiss, and Asa saw that the yellowed glass popped open, letting in cool air from the outside.
I’ve been traveling at 600 miles per hour for 6 hours, Asa thought. I could be anywhere.
His seat automatically sat itself back up into a sitting position, and his seatbelts unclicked. A voice rang out over an electronic sound system—“Fishies. Exit your train cars, wait to be handed a parka, and then exit to the stairs above. There, group leaders will guide you to your resident mountain.” Asa was sure that he had heard the voice before. The audio loop started again—“Fishies. Exit your train cars…”
Asa could hear people climbing out of their train cars in front and behind him. He settled down into the leather seat for one additional moment, shook his head, trying to reign in his emotions. He forced himself to smile, and then pulled himself out.
The beautiful girl with green eyes, Charlotte, was standing on the concrete platform when Asa exited his car. She was smiling at him and his heart fluttered. “Did you have a good trip?”
“Yeah,” Asa said. He was giving an exaggerated nod, hoping that he had wiped all the tears from his face. “Did you?”
“Yeah,” she said, and smiled again. Her clean white teeth were a stark contrast to her muddied skin. Asa saw that the other teenagers were filthy as well. He wondered if all of them had to sink to the bottom of some body of water as well.
“Fishies,” the loop began again. Asa looked at the giant TV screen mounted on the wall and saw an image of Robert King sitting at a desk, dictating orders. He was a white haired old man with a slight Southern draw. He spoke out of the side of his mouth, and all of his motions were firm. He was the richest man in the history of the world, the owner of the one and only Wolf Flu vaccine. Asa had no idea what The Boss could have to do with any of this.
All around him, teenagers dressed in street clothes, and men and women dressed in black costumes like McCoy and Conway had worn were walking from the train cars to a series of stone steps that rose above them and out of sight. On either side of the massive steps stood two bald people handing out parkas with goldfish on them.
The audio loop began to play again, “Fishies…”
Fishies.
Fishies.
Asa’s mouth went dry and the room spun around him. He was only dimly aware of these things, and the looped speech playing from the intercom ceased being processed by his brain. His mind was somewhere else, and his eyes went blank as he drifted back into a memory.
He was in the cop car with Harold Kensing. It was warm in there, and Asa looked at the dashboard where the crazed man had tore his radio out of the front of the vehicle. A tangle of blue and red wires jutted out into the cabin. He could feel Officer Kensing’s breath on him as he spoke. “They showed me a picture of you and everything. They had a whole file on you. It said that you were going to be a fishy this year.”
“Asa.”
Asa jumped, startled. He was back in the train station.
“Are you okay?” Charlotte was looking at him with concerned green eyes. Her mouth was slightly open and Asa stole a glance at it. Her lips were soft and relaxed.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m fine.”
He could tell by her facial expression that she didn’t believe him. “We need to move, or we’ll be left behind.”
Asa saw that she now had a parka on. The train station was practically empty now except for the two bald people standing on either end of the staircase. He wondered how long he had been standing there in a trance. “Right, sorry.”
Asa walked towards the stairs, his heart thudding in his chest. Robert King spoke again—“Fishies…” and his speech looped on from there.
The man on the right side of the stairs handed Asa a heavy, well-insulated parka. “Thanks,” Asa said.
“Welcome, mate,” said the bald man. He smiled at Asa and the fourteen year old’s mouth opened to scream. He remembered what McCoy had said about keeping what had happened with Harold Kensing to himself, and was able to stop his shriek at the last minute.
The bald man smiled more when he saw Asa fright, and Asa hurried up the stairs. “Did you see…?” Asa began to ask Charlotte.
“Shhhh!” Charlotte reminded as they ascended the stairs. “Keep your voice down. Yes, I saw. They have black gums.”
“What do we do?”
“How should I know? Just keep moving.”
As they climbed the steps, Asa felt adrenaline flow through his body and his fear mount. Harold Kensin
g hadn’t been crazy. How else could he have known about the fishy place and the people with black gums? Asa had no time to think about this new information. He climbed the stairs next to Charlotte, pulling on his parka as they walked.
It’s the middle of summer, why do I need a Parka?
Asa’s answer came as they rounded the top of the stairs. They were in a massive glass dome that stood forty feet high and made a spacious circle around them. The only things in the glass dome were Asa, Charlotte, the staircase, and an empty tile floor. A glass door stood before them and Asa saw the others walking down cobblestone paths with the hoods of their blue parkas pulled over their heads. An image of a goldfish was stitched into the back of each parka, between the shoulder blades.
“Wow,” Charlotte whispered. Her eyes lit up as she spun around, looking out the windows.
Snow drifted down from the sky and landed on the layer of white that covered everything. They were in tundra. In the distance, Five Mountains surrounded them. They were the tallest things that Asa had ever seen, their snow covered peaks rising through clouds and hazed by the blue tint that atmosphere gives objects at incredible distances away. He felt frozen by awe, and he turned on his feet to examine each goliath structure.
They were completely surrounded. From where Asa stood, he could see that the Five Mountains were all connected without a break or valley for even a river to run through. He had never heard of rock structures creating a barrier like this before. Asa saw that four of the mountains looked very similar. These four mountains jutted up at a height that Asa’s eyes couldn’t believe, that his brain couldn’t comprehend. They made the Tower, the tree that Asa had fallen from, look like a toothpick that sat next to a house. Each of these four mountains was roughly the same height and shape as the next. A few buildings were scattered up the bottom tenth of the four elevations.
Asa looked at the fifth mountain for the longest, an impossibly large hunk of rock looming in the South. If the first four mountains were houses, this one was a mansion, standing four or five times higher than the rest. Asa wondered what the top must be like, and if anyone had ever been that high. Surely there is no oxygen at that level.
Inside of the circumference of the mountains, and directly outside of the glass bubble that Asa and Charlotte were standing in was a grid of streets and buildings. It was beautiful; the small town that sat guarded by the Five Mountains was a result of artistic genius and an obsessive attention to detail. Cobble stone streets ran and crisscrossed in between buildings. Rain gutters were slit into low sidewalks, and despite the falling snow, the street remained clear. Black streetlamps stood erect in the sidewalk, glowing fire in the fading light. Atop each of the lamps was a black iron crow; each was made differently, with different shapes, standing positions, feather dispersal, and body compositions represented among the statues; they looked real except for the shine of the metal and the fact that they never moved. Stone buildings rose up out of the ground, their chimneys smoking and snow resting inches thick atop slanted roofs. The buildings were remarkably clean. Each window was spotless. Directly across from where Asa was facing he saw a building with stone steps leading up the heavy metal doors. Black, iron vines climbed up the doors, dipping in and out of the metal. Each crevasse of the fake plants was clean, and the whole thing shined like a polished piano. The milk white steps in the front of the building were perfect and pure.
Charlotte was still immersed in the sight, taking in all that was around her when Asa saw the last of their group turn a corner and disappear behind a building. “C’mon, we need to keep moving,” Asa said, “they’re leaving us behind.”
They hurried out the glass door and the chill of the wind took their breath away. Asa gasped and took a step backward, shocked at the temperature. “Where are we?” he asked Charlotte. “Colorado?”
“I don’t think it’s this cold in a Colorado summer. And we traveled much further than that.”
They jogged through the cold air, their feet flapping on the cobblestone path. As Asa looked up at the buildings around him, his first question was—what is this place? —and his second was—where did they get all this money? From a distance the details seemed spectacular, but now, as he moved throughout the quiet town, they were absurdly extravegant. The doorknobs were carved of gold, the cobblestone was warmed to keep the snow from sticking, and the beautiful blue and red and yellow flowers sprouted up amidst intricate bushes, despite the below zero temperatures. Asa had never heard of flowers that could bloom in such cold weather.
Asa and Charlotte held their parkas up to cover their ears as they ran, trying to catch up. They heard the distant voices of their group and didn’t want to get lost in the unfamiliar territory.
A crow descended from the sky above and landed on a black stone mailbox on the sidewalk. Asa looked at the crow, and they caught eyes. He wondered if the animals were working out some kind of plan to get him out of this place, but he looked up to find a sky vacant of any birds. The crow was old, and had a broken beak and a missing left eye. At first, Asa thought that he recognized the crow. Seeing it in the snowy atmosphere reminded him of something. But, as he continued to run he decided that he was incorrect. Many crows look alike.
Their group came into view in front of them, people in parkas walking in a line that spanned the entirety of the cobblestone. McCoy was in the back of the line waiting for them when they came up. His black suit had seemingly grown a hood, and he looked at them with searching blue eyes.
“Where have you been?” he asked, angry. The relaxed demeanor that he often held was gone.
“We fell behind,” Charlotte said.
“Well don’t let it happen again. Remember what I told you two.”
They looked up and saw that their group was walking down a narrow road toward a dock that stretched out over a body of water. Asa hadn’t been able to see the water from the glass bubble because the buildings surrounding had blocked his vision.
“Where are we going?” Asa asked McCoy.
“We have to cross the Moat and get you checked in at the appropriate residency.”
“The Moat?” Charlotte said.
“It’s not actually a moat. It’s just called that. It’s a reservoir. We’re on an island right now, and there is a body of water surrounding us, separating us from the Five Mountains. The Moat makes a complete circle around this little island, which is called the town. Do you see the steam coming off the water? It’s heated so that it never freezes.”
“How warm is it?” Asa asked.
“It’s still pretty cold. The water is probably in the fifties, if I were to guess.”
“Have you ever been in it?”
McCoy laughed. “Loads of times. You will too.”
Asa wrapped his arms around himself and couldn’t imagine being wet in weather like this. The fog drifting up off the water made the Moat look mysterious, inviting. It was a beautiful sight, sitting there beneath the snow-covered mountains.
As the group continued to move forward, more of the Moat became visible to them. It was enormous, and seemed to stretch a mile between the island that they were standing on and the mainland where the mountains sat. Asa saw that there was a series of enormous floating platforms out in the middle of the water. The biggest of the platforms, and the one situated in the middle looked like a giant checkerboard. The object was the size and shape of a basketball court with ten by ten cutouts made in the platform where the water shown through. These cutouts sat by equally large areas of platform. On either side of this checkerboard-like platform were what looked like a series of five large doorframes floating in the water. They floated directly in line with one another, spaced out about ten feet apiece, in an upright position just like a doorframe would normally sit.
“What are those platforms for?” Asa asked McCoy.
McCoy smiled, and Asa saw a woman in a black suit cast a sideways glance at McCoy. His relaxed way of moving had returned. “In time, my child. The Assembly is tonight. Many of your ques
tions will be answered there.”
The boat that sat on the end of the dock was, like everything else, beautiful. It was carved entirely of wood with hundreds of seats on the top. Sails sat on masts above the deck to move the vessel.
Asa looked over the group that he was traveling with and guessed that there were roughly 450 of them. All of the people in black (Asa overheard them being called chaperones) began to wave people down the dock and onto the boat. The small wooden vessel bobbed with the weight of the moving people.
Asa was staring ahead and didn’t notice the bald person moving in the opposite direction as them. He was tall, and when he talked his slimy black gums shone. He had dark eyes that were sunken in deep underneath where his eyebrows should have been, but weren’t. He wore a pure white suit with a red rose pinned to his left breast pocket. There was a small, skinny man following in the bald one’s shadow.
This man who was following had a full head of hair and healthy pink gums. He wore a black suit, like McCoy, Conway, and the rest of the chaperones, but his figure was much less impressive. He was gaunt and seemed malnourished. His ribs poked through the tight fabric and his spine was twisted with scoliosis.
When Asa finally did notice the man with black gums in the white suit, he was no more than ten feet away. The bald man’s gray, cold eyes were set on Asa in such a stare that Asa froze where he stood for a moment. McCoy and Charlotte kept walking, leaving Asa at the back of the line, where no one could witness what happened.
The bald, black-gummed man was barking orders and the frail, glasses ridden man in a black suit was hurrying to keep up, and trying to scribble down everything that the bald man said onto a yellow legal pad. “No! I said call Ken Pudman’s secretary and tell them that I can only meet on Tuesday at…”
The man in the white suit stopped talking for a moment and the frail scribe following behind him looked up expecting the rest of the sentence. Something about Asa’s face had made the man with black gums lose his train of thought. The man’s nostrils flared, taking in the surrounding scents.